


Tell Me You Love Me (Even if You're Angry)

by Unclesteeb



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Anger, Angst with a Happy Ending, Love Confessions, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-23
Updated: 2016-08-23
Packaged: 2018-08-10 13:43:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7847326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unclesteeb/pseuds/Unclesteeb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was Bucky’s idea, shortly after they first admitted it to each other. Shortly after everything with the Accords happened. Shortly after Steve had given up his shield and decided to rip whatever was left of Hydra apart limb by limb (and they agreed to help). They were having some argument about something so stupid, so unimportant but it was their first one and instead of yelling back something rude, or making his point Bucky told Sam he loved him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tell Me You Love Me (Even if You're Angry)

**Author's Note:**

> Based on a prompt asking for the expansion of this "even during a screaming argument (they had lots of them) there was always about ten yelled love confessions and five angry hugs. Both of them had to lost enough people they cared about to always make sure that they both knew they were loved" from one of my[ tumblr ficlets](http://unclesteeb.tumblr.com/post/148946611376/babydoll). 
> 
> The post CACW timeline is a little different here. Steve, Bucky and Sam go after Hydra for a while before T'Challa offers to help Bucky.

Sam’s yelling. Yelling at Bucky because he started it, because he had a shit day and wanted to be mean, so he was. He pushed at Sam and pushed and _pushed_ until Sam snapped back, then he pushed some more. 

Sam’s stops yelling. Bucky knows that he’s supposed to respond. He heard Sam’s inflection lift at the end of his sentence. He knows that Sam asked him a question, but he’s too damn lost in his own head to reply. Instead, he grits his teeth and stares.

Sam’s chest heaves with a big breath and his nostrils flare. His eyes narrow and he spits, “I’m leaving. I need a walk.” 

Bucky feels fear rise deep in his chest. Sam’s grabbing his coat, Sam’s putting on his shoes, Sam’s leaving. He’s up quickly and darts to where Sam’s standing by the door. “No!” he says. It comes out crackly and panicked. He grabs Sam’s wrist with hand and holds on tight.

Sam whips his head around, “Yes I am,” he grits.

Bucky shakes his head furiously. “You’re not. You can’t.”

Sam’s nostrils flare and his mouth snarls, “Why?”

“Because there’s an entire government out there looking for you, looking for me too and if you go then you know I’m going to follow you.”

“You don’t have to fucking follow me. I can take care of myself.”

“I know you can, Sam, I know just-” Bucky takes a deep breath and tries to steady himself, “I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“You don’t want me to get hurt? What the fuck was that show earlier huh? Look, Buck, I know enough about psychology to know that I’m your ‘safe person’ and when you feel like shit you just feel like you can take it out on me. It makes perfect fucking sense considering the number of people we can trust is well below ten. But I’ve had enough. You can’t fucking push me like this. You can’t. It ends. Now.” 

Bucky grimaces, his heart is racing, “Please don’t go. I’m sorry. I'm so fucking sorry. I didn’t-”

“You did. You might not have known that you meant to but you did. Look we’re both fucked up. Shit happens, but I’m telling you that I need to leave right now. I need to go outside and get some fucking fresh air and clear my head. Let me go.”

Bucky doesn’t say anything. Sam’s brown eyes are hot and flashing with anger. He knows he needs to let Sam go. He knows he’s not being fair. So he does, quickly releasing his grip on Sam’s wrist. Sam pulls it tightly to his body and spins around on his heel to start to walk out the front door. 

“I love you.” Bucky calls out after him.

He sees Sam’s shoulders rise and fall with a sigh. “I love you too, Bucky.” He sounds angry when he says it, but they won’t let it go unsaid. They never will. Then Sam’s out the door. 

***

Bucky’s yelling. He’s yelling because Sam decided to try and get himself killed on whatever secret mission they had went on earlier with Steve. He’s yelling because Sam made a dumbass decision and refused to wait for backup and got shot in the thigh. He’s yelling because Bucky found him, practically half-dead from blood loss lying in a field. He’s yelling because he had to carry his boyfriend’s limp body back to the jet. He’s yelling because there’s not much that Bucky’s afraid of anymore, but he was fucking scared. 

“Bucky you don’t need to watch over me like a fucking mother hen all the time goddamnit!”

“You’re right, but when you do shit like that it makes me wonder if maybe I do!”

“You’re being ridiculous. We do this shit all the time. Get over it.”

The words make Bucky’s blood boil. He doesn’t want to get over it. He wants Sam to know, he wants Sam to understand. 

“I love you. I can not lose you.” 

Sam’s brows furrow and he clenches his fists at the sides. “I love you too. But Jesus fuck, Bucky…” he trails off with a sigh.

Bucky moves over to him in a flash, wrapping his arm tightly around Sam’s body. Sam leans into his touch instantly and lets Bucky kiss his face and run his hand up and down Sam’s back gently. 

“I didn’t mean to scare you.” Sam says, seeing through all of Bucky’s anger to the root of the problem.

“I know but I can’t lose you. I can’t. I couldn’t-” He cuts himself off by pressing a soft kiss to Sam’s neck. 

***  
They’ve been through too much to not say it, regardless of anger, regardless of sadness or happiness. They’ve both lost too many people, been hurt too badly. 

It was Bucky’s idea, shortly after they first admitted it to each other. Shortly after everything with the Accords happened. Shortly after Steve had given up his shield and decided to rip whatever was left of Hydra apart limb by limb (and they agreed to help). They were having some argument about something so stupid, so unimportant but it was their first one and instead of yelling back something rude, or making his point Bucky told Sam he loved him.

Sam had stopped mid-sentence and narrowed his eyes. The confession of love had thrown him off, then it made him angry. 

“Is this your way of trying to win the fight? Because that’s fucking dumb, Barnes.”

“No.” Bucky had told him, small, quiet. “What happens if we go to bed angry and without saying it and someone from Hydra manages to break in and kill us in our sleep?”

Sam had stared at him, blinked a few times. Bucky had continued, “What happens if when you go for your run tomorrow someone recognizes you and you either end up back in The Raft, which by the way, we both know you’ll never get out of again, or worse- they kill you?”

Sam bit at his bottom lip. Bucky tried some more. “What happens if I’m at the grocery store and I get spotted? What happens if wake up tomorrow with fucking Ross standing over us with a firing squad? Sam, I died,” Bucky’s voice cracked and he cleared his throat, “I died without telling my sisters and my parents I loved them. I think they knew, but I never got to tell them one last time. They’re gone and I'll never see them again.”

Sam took a step closer to him, “I died without telling Steve how damn proud of him I was. How he didn’t need any serum to make him special. That he was my brother and I loved him. I let you and Wanda, Scott and Clint get locked up in The Raft for me and I didn’t even say thank you.”

“Buck-” Sam tried but Bucky shook his head.

“I’ve spent almost my entire life destroying and killing. Sam, being with you gave me more than that. I know I’m fucked up. I know that this” he pointed in-between their bodies, “isn’t easy but I don’t want you to question for a single second how much I love you. I don’t want another missed chance at telling you. I want you to know it in your bones.” 

Sam had pulled Bucky into a hug then. Bucky took a second to just breathe him in, let Sam surround his senses. “You’re something else, you know that?” Sam had told him. 

Bucky had shrugged. Something else was one way to put it. 

“If I could tell Riley, or my parents anything, I’d tell them I loved them just one more time.” Sam admitted quietly. “I love you too, Bucky. I love you too.”

It became something they did after that, the constant love confessions. To an outsider it seemed sappy, hell, maybe it was, but there was something so deep-seeded about it that neither of them really cared what it seemed like. It’s what they needed, so they did it. 

***

“Tell me you love me!” Sam shouts. It’s a bad fight, a nasty, dirty one that neither of them are proud of. “Tell me!”

“Fuck you!” Bucky shouted in response. He was losing it. His hand was shaking. He took a step backwards away from Sam. 

“No! You don't get to preach this ‘we have to tell each other we love each other because what if something happens when we’re angry’ shit and then act like this! You're acting like a child!”

Bucky growled, “I'm acting like a child? You're the one who has been an asshole all day! You're the one who can't get it through your fucking head that I need this!”

“You're being a coward is what you're doing! You need to go back into cryofreeze? For what Bucky? To hide some more?”

“Oh come the fuck on. You know that anyone could have a copy of those words. You know what happens to me. I kill people, Sam! I'm not hiding!”

“Yes you are! You hid from me and Steve for two years while we looked for you! You hid with me after all the shit with the accords went down! Now you're trying to hide again! That's all you fucking know how to do. Run and hide.” Sam’s eyes widened at his own words before he narrowed them again.

Bucky’s chest ached. “Fuck you.”

“Tell me I'm wrong! Tell me you love me and that I'm wrong! Tell me you've made a mistake.” Sam’s voice started to crack and his eyes filled with tears, “tell me you're not going to do this.”

“I can't. I can't. I've been trying to get better. But I can't if those words are still inside my head. I'll never be safe. You'll never be safe.”

Sam’s mouth gaped. “Is this all because of last week? This is, isn't it. You were having a _nightmare_ Bucky. You didn't mean-”

“I fucking smacked you so hard you still have a black eye!”

“Bucky you were asleep!” 

“I still hurt you! I hurt you like I hurt everyone else! What if I kill you next time before I wake up? I can't keep living in fear!”

“You know what I can't do?” Sam approaches Bucky fast, backing him into a corner. “I can't sit here and watch you freeze yourself because T’Challa thinks that if you do he might be able to help you. I can't sit here while you and Steve work with him behind my fucking back. I can't sit here and pretend like I'm okay with letting you go.”

Bucky tries to hold eye contact with Sam, he really does, but then he blinks and tears spill down his cheeks and it's too much, it's too-

“Just let me go.” He pleads. “Please Sam. Let me have this.”

Sam brings a shaking hand up close to Bucky’s face. For a second, it looks like he might punch him, but he strokes his cheek instead. Sam tucks a piece of hair behind Bucky’s ear. “Tell me you love me.”

Bucky screws his face up, trying to hold back everything building inside him. He wants to scream, he wants to run, _Sam’s right_ , he just wants to run. “I love you.” He says instead.

“I love you too.” Then he slumps into Bucky’s chest. Bucky holds him there with his arm around Sam's middle. “I hate you. I hate you so much. I can't believe you'd spend all these months with us. I can't believe you'd let me fall in love with you and then leave like this.”

“It's not forever. It's just until they can figure it out. T’Challa’s team is smarter than anyone else’s. You know that.”

Sam nods. “I can't believe you.” He laughs, hysterical and repeats himself, “I can't believe you.”

Sam and Steve fly Bucky to Wakanda the next day. Sam stays by his side as the medical team preps him. When it's time for Bucky to go in the chamber, he pulls Sam in as tightly as he can. He kisses Sam, sweet, then tells him, “I love you.”

“I love you too.” Sam says, then let's Bucky go. He watches as the ice surrounds him and he becomes still. “I love you too.” He says again, staring at Bucky as hard as he can, wanting to remember every detail of his face.

It doesn't take long. Steve gets the call from T’Challa about six months after Bucky gets put under that they've figured out how to remove his trigger words. Sam and Steve get there as quickly as they can, just in time for the words to be read to Bucky for a final time. Sam stands behind a two-way mirror, watching as Steve and T’Challa brace for the worst case scenario on the other side.

“Freight car” is the last word of the sequence. Sam holds his breath until Bucky doesn't do anything but look up and _smile_.

Sam’s through the door to the lab in an instant, flying into Bucky’s arms. Bucky makes a surprised sound but swoops him up quickly into his lap. 

“I love you.” Sam says, squeezing Bucky as tightly as he can. 

“I love you too.”

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on [ tumblr ](unclesteeb.tumblr.com) for more dramatics and more sambucky.


End file.
